The Ideal User Experience for Library Websites

New as of December 2012

3 Goals:

•Allow customers to complete transactions (holds, renewals, fine payment, etc.) with maximum efficiency, and without leaving our website

Organization Specific Info

What do customers want from a library website?

What does staff want from your website?

What do you want from your website?

The Homepage as a Distraction and Time Suck

•Let's say your write something about hippos, AND

• You get it highlighted on the homepage for the whole month, AND

• 25% of website visitors are interested in hippos (this is a very high percentage - I am illustrating a point). THIS MEANS

• 10,000 homepage visitors might be interested in hippos. SO,

• Considering the fact that less than 1% of homepage visitors click on highlighted information

• The hippo page would get 50 additional visits at best.

BUT

- If an employee is interested in something, chances are people in their organic network are interested in it too

- Empower employees to share pages through email links and social sharing

SOCIAL SHARING IS A MORE EFFICIENT, TARGETED WAY TO INCREASE TRAFFIC TO FEATURED INFORMATION

Is it really broken?

Integrated Discovery and Account Management

Integrated OPAC

Relationships

Maximum Usage

Separate user interfaces are confusing

No opportunity to market to customers

No credit from search engines for our holdings

All customer visits should begin and end at the library website

All library websites would be optimized for mobile and tablet

All library owned content should live under one roof

Subscription Services

Subscription resource types:

- downloads (ebooks, emagazines, music, etc.)

- online access books

- online access articles

- online learning

Downloads

eBooks

Audiobooks

eMagazines

Music

Subscription Databases

Digital Collections

Kelly Coulter

Richland Library in Columbia SC

Virtual Services Manager

@KellyLCoulter

kcoulter@richlandlibrary.com

Only work with providers who are committed to providing comprehensive APIs

Empower staff to build relationships online

Creating copy and content

Sharing ideas

Virtual reference

Social media sharing

Support initiatives like Readers First that encourage vendors to adhere to a standard for openness

Personal Background:

- Web developer since 1999

- Commercial web development until 2010 (Berkley-fishing.com; AbuGarcia.com; PENNcustomShop.com)

Please bust in with your questions at any time!

RichlandLibrary.com:

Integrating with those resources that "play nice"

Developing front end in our Drupal site

Sending customers to 3rd party sites as a last resort only

First two levels of content are written by marketing or web team, everything past that is contributed by staff

Content contribution tools and processes

- All contributions contain a reference to at least one item using an event, ISBN, OCLC, or UPC

- Helps with reader's advisory in the absence of an open ILS

Library Digital Service

ILS Related Services

Library Digital Services

Discovery

Holds/Lists/Carts

Account Management

"skate where the puck's going, not where it's been" Wayne Gretzky

Subscription services

Online Courses

Online access books

Music

Articles

eMagazines

Audiobooks

Research

eBooks

Navigability

Discovery

Ideal User Experience

Optimized User Experience

ILS Related Services

One location

One login

Indexed by search engines under one URL without subdomains

Fully controlled by the product owner

Holds/Lists/Carts

Responsive design

Integration

Account Management

Reader's advisory

Single search

Better usability

Search engine optimization

Ability to provide customized suggestions and content based on past behavior

Ask a librarian

Custom content

Virtual reference

Staff contributed content

Services information

Informational pages

Virtual reference

Locations information

Organization Specific Information

Customers DON'T Want

• Fluff, jargon

• Library speak

• Editorial content

• Human interest content

Exposure for their initiatives

Some want to contribute information

Reviews

Book lists

Tutorials

Reduce duplication of effort

Help the customer get all they can

Obstacles:

Separate services confuse customers

Organizational boundaries

Lack of focus/prioritization

•90,000 unique customers visit our site each month.

•40,500 enter through the homepage.

•The statistical vast majority are looking for information about jobs, locations, or downloads. Therefore, most traffic goes to the jobs page, the downloads section, or a location page.

The Ideal User Experience

http://tinyurl.com/idealUX

Notes:

Other presentations by Kelly Coulter

• TinyURL.com/coulter-project-management

• TinyURL.com/coulter-redesign

This presentation edited 4/7/2014 - 2086 views before edits